BEST Laptops and Tablet

BEST Laptops and Tablets

Tablet Advisor

The Best Laptops for Every Type of Businessperson

By Louise Miller

By , Last updated on: 12/3/2014

There isn’t just one type of businessperson
out there – people work in countless different industries and often have very
different ways of doing things. So how can a businessperson — the orderly small
business owner, the efficient graphic designer or the on-the-go consultant — decide
which laptop best suits his or her needs? Here are the best laptops for those
businessmen and women who do what they love and love what they do (or just want
to do what they do better).

Business
On-the-Go

Finding the right
portable business laptop is about finding balance: slim and sleek without
compromising performance, sturdy without becoming bulky and functional without
being bland. It’s amazing how out of whack these things can get (see Panasonic’s
ToughBook Model 31, an 11-pound beast out of place everywhere except maybe a
warzone, or the $4,800 Sony Vaio Z12AHX
Glossy Premium Carbon – a beautiful laptop, to be sure, but one that’s severely
lacking in functionality for a price tag that hefty).

Even though Apple’s MacBook Pro comes close with a precise combination of
performance, design and portability, its lack of compatibility (Microsoft still
rules the roost when it comes to business software and operating systems) and
$1,800 price tag convince the smart business that searching for a cheaper, more
functional alternative is well worth the effort.

So, which laptop strikes the right balance if you’re looking for the best
ultrabook? Lenovo offers several ThinkPad models targeted at the mobile
businessperson – lightweight laptops with up to 15 hours battery life and
productivity features for less than $800.

It’s also hard to argue against Samsung’s Series 9 ultrabook, in either
its 15 or 13.3 inch incarnations. The Series 9 weighs 2.49 pounds, is 0.51
inches thick and is seriously fast compared to other business laptops in its
class with a no-nonsense 9.1-second boot up speed.

As if the portability and performance weren’t enough, this computer has
seriously good looks. Grabbing this machine out of your briefcase at the
airport, in the board room or back at the hotel room after a long day’s work is
the opposite of underwhelming with its clean lines, considered layout, and
beautiful display.

For
the Graphic Designer

How do you shop for a
business laptop with specifications as specific as those necessary for a
graphic designer? One word: performance. Running specialist software, having a
high resolution visual display, and making sure it all comes in hardware that
will keep it all safe – these demands require high levels of performance, if in
slightly different senses of the word.

That can seem a bit
disorienting. What helps is to zoom in on essential features and for graphic design
there’s really nothing more important than a good dedicated, i.e.,
non-integrated graphics card. One of the best is the Nvidia Quadro FX. It’s a
beast, really, more than up to the task of editing video and animation while expending
hardly any effort at all to work with large picture files.

Even though this
graphics card can be found in a decent amount of PCs, it finds its true home in
the Dell Precision M4700, a no-nonsense, get-things-done laptop whose ultimate appeal
comes from being the most practical among a class of machines all vying to make
your work life just a bit easier. At just over $4,000, the M4700 isn’t the
cheapest of laptops, but the time and money savings that will accrue as a
result of not needing after-market upgrades are sure to make this laptop well
worth the initially hesitation-inducing price tag.

The
Small Business Owner

In many ways, the small business owner is the ultimate businessperson.
Owning your own business certainly requires you to be a jack of all trades and
this will undoubtedly mean that you’ll need your laptop to be versatile,
efficient and loaded with all the features you may need on any given day.

When all of these things are taken into account, one of the best laptops in
this category is the Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E530 Laptop with Professional
Operating System. This computer — quite possibly the
only one a small businessperson will need — comes equipped with Windows 7 Professional, which can be upgraded now that
Windows 8 has been released. It has a seriously reliable 500 GB hard drive. And for those
work-from-home business owners, its 15.6-inch screen
makes it large enough to provide an almost desktop-like experience while still
being portable enough should you need to make the occasional trip to meet a
client or business partner in person.

What really makes the ThinkPad Edge E530 so
hard to beat is the price. For a small business, any amount of savings is
always welcome, no matter how seemingly trivial. Purchasing a laptop with a
business-optimized professional operating system for under $700 could save a
small business owner around $1,500 against similar models while still having
the hardware features and software required for doing business, no trivial feat.

Finding the right
laptop is never easy, especially so when it needs to be fit for purpose. However,
if you know what you need – whether the emphasis is on portability, performance,
or practicality – the choice can become crystal clear in no time, no matter your
area of business.

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